Harper Lee Quotes

The Church is a terrible engine of oppression, especially as concerns woman

The worst enemy women have is in the pulpit.

We found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman.

It's just so hard sometimes to work out where people stand on these things. I mean, isn't the Pope a feminist?

The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading.

All religions have always hated females.

The faith of the church must be tried by God's word, and not God's word by the church; neither yet my faith.

No future life could heal the degradation of having been a woman. Religion in the world had nothing but insults for women.

The very word woman in the writings of the church fathers stood for the basest of temptations.... As women were lowered in the moral scale because of their identification with her at the very bottom of the pit, so they cannot rise themselves save as they succeed in lifting her with whose sins they are weighed.

The Church ... has always reproved the doctrines and condemned the men that rebel against the legitimate [secular] authority.

The only way you can separate yourself from the [Roman Catholic] church is by knowingly and deliberately denying a dogma of faith. Abortion is not a dogma.

If they who hold such views have authority to meet, your Wisdom approved in Christ must see that, inasmuch as we do not approve their views, any permission of assembly granted to them is nothing less than a declaration that their view is thought more true than ours. For if they are permitted to teach their view as godly men, and with all confidence to preach their doctrine, it is manifest that the doctrine of the Church has been condemned, as though the truth were on their side. For nature does not admit of two contrary doctrines on the same subject being both true. How then could your noble and lofty mind submit to suspend your usual courage in regard to the correction of so great an evil?

… male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

I never agreed with the message of the Catholic Church - and still don't to this day.

In France, we respect women: we don't beat them; we don't ask them to hide themselves behind a veil as if they were impure.

But I make a distinction between the doctrines of the Church, which matter, and the structure invented by half a dozen Italians who got to be pope and which is of very little use to anybody.

On the ordination of women, the church has spoken and said no. John Paul II, in a definitive formulation said that door is closed.

The saving principles and doctrines of the Church are established, fixed, and unchangeable.

Following Christ, the Church seeks the truth, which is not always the same as the majority opinion.

A preacher's life should be a commentary upon his doctrine... Heavenly doctrines should always be adorned with a heavenly life.

The universal religion - contempt for women.

The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions, and most others, are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women's bodies.

Woman was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.

Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation.

Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine," seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times.